GARDINER MAGAZINE GUN. In this arm the barrel and tip-stock slide forward and backward on ways nected with the butt-stock. They are released to move forward, and secured when back by a hook into which the forward end of a trigger-guard is formed. This guard revolves, to a sufficient extent for this purpose, on a pin passing through it, at the forward end of the guard-bow. It locks the piece automatically, when it is closed by the action of a spring at its rearmost end. In moving out the barrel the hammer is cocked by an internal connection between the barrel and the bler. A cartridge having been expelled backward from the magazine by the action of the magazine-spring, it is raised by the striking of a projection on the lower end of the barrel against the forward end of a bent lever, the rearmost end of which lies beneath the cartridge. This passes it up a pair of guides on the face of the frame, so shaped as to hold within their jaws the head of the cartridge by the rim. When it arrives opposite to the mouth of the chamber it is passed into it by closing the piece. By repeating the movements as described, the succeeding
ridge will pass up the guides as before, and striking from below the empty one just fired, will throw it up the guides with sufficient force to send it clear of the gun. The magazine is charged through the trough into which the space between the ways is formed. The issue of the cartridges from the magazine is limited to one at each forward motion of the barrel by the interposition of the spring-stop. which is pressed out of the way by the barrel at the end of its stroke. The maga zine can be cut off and hel.1 in reserve by a revolving- eccentric stop, moved by a thumb-piece on the outside. The arm can then be used as a sing,le-loader by in serting the rim of the cartridges into the guides at each opening of the piece. By a cam-motion of the movable trigger-guard power is obtained to start the barrel slightly away from the butt, and thus to overcome the chief obstacle to the re moval of the empty shell, viz., its sticking at the start.